tldr: Australian pressure group Collective Shout has claimed responsibility for the recent Itch.io and Steam developments that have seen the platforms change how they deal with - and in some cases remove - NSFW games and content from their respective platforms.
The group had already been closely linked with the situation, which has seen Itch.io and Steam scramble to appease payment providers like Visa as they suddenly took an interest in the kind of games available on the platforms, especially those which contravened rules and “standards” the payment providers apparently had. It led to Itch.io deindexing all NSFW content from its browse and search pages, and Steam introducing vague new rules about adult content, while removing a slew of games.
“In response to false claims and misinformation about our campaign, we’re setting the record straight,” wrote Collective Shout in a Facebook update. "Some have asked why we involved payment processors, and others have claimed we are responsible for Itch.io removing all NSFW content.
"We raised our objection to r*pe and incest games on Steam for months, and they ignored us for months. We approached payment processors because Steam did not respond to us.
“We called on Itch.io to remove rpe and incest games that we argued normalised violence and abuse of women. Itch.io made the decision to remove all NSFW content. Our objections were to content that involved sxualised violence and torture of women.”
Collective Shout shared a timeline of the campaign on its website, noting how it began with No Mercy, a game which involves extreme sexual violence, being brought to its in March. The group’s actions - a mixture of petitioning, emailing, and lobbying - began in early April and led to the game being removed from sale later that month.
it’s really wild that payment processors have decided to be the arbiter of content on the Internet.
they’ve been doing it since the late 90s/early 00s. Visa and MC have a list of “rules” for porn companies and have had them for decades. Why the vast majority of adult entertainment companies use third party processors like CCBill to specifically deal with that shit.
These dumb fucks in Australia think they’re ahead of the curve or doing “something that has never been done before” but nah man they probably did talk to Visa and MC but highly doubt they pushed them to anything. it was more like Visa/MC said “oh yeah we did this before…yeah we should probably apply what we did to Porn to the gaming industry.”
Australia is pretty weird about porn too. For years their rules basically ensured all female porn actors get boob jobs and took scissors to their labia.
Never heard about this, what are you referring to?
Here’s a video and a few links for you.
https://www.mamamia.com.au/why-australian-law-demands-all-vaginas-be-digitally-altered-nsfw/
Thanks for taking the time to put those resources together for me.
That’s absolutely crazy, my goodness… Some people really are insane when it comes to sex. It reminds me a bit of how you can show soft penises in American TV to some extent without it being considered pornographic, but hard penises are pornographic. But this labia issue makes even less sense than that, because it doesn’t depend on arousal. What a backwards situation
Don’t forget ad companies! Those ad companies love a squeaky clean, family fun internet.
I also love squeaky clean, ad-less internet. In this timeline, sadly, I get to enjoy both, while only half of that would be enough for me.
Blessed uBlock.
The ad companies hear you and are working on it
Chrome forced DRM for websites (which they are pushing) would end that
How would I know? uBlock keeps the shit off the machine.
Yeah taking on this role will only bring them more problems. Once you decide to not be content neutral, you are responsible for everything you transmit.
Someone down under needs to send some complaints about them in. There is no way anyone who projects that much isn’t guilty of something.
There are lots of people poking at them with sticks. Every time someone does it they post who’s doing it and show it as proof that they’re being oppressed.
The only thing dumber than your comment is the amount of up votes you have.
Thanks coming from someone with your post history it means a lot.
At least sarcasm isn’t dead!
Its not but that wasn’t sarcasm.
So my post did mean a lot?
Oh its a lot of posts confirming what I suspected.
Well at least you are a good judge of character.
Next they are banning sex toy purchases, r rated movies, tabacco, vape and alcohol.
next they’ll probably want to ban LGBT content since it’s “clearly pornographic”
Clearly you didn’t read the article
or i share similar concerns with the person from the quote in the final part of the article…
i’m not sure how bringing up something in the article makes it “clear” that i didn’t read said article
Nor did you read between the lines.
Have you gone to their (Collective Shout) website to check out their successful campaigns? They’ve taken down a manufacturer on Temu who makes silicon heads used for piercing. Apparently the heads looked too much like children.
Our objections were to content that involved sexualised violence and torture of women.
Okay so why did m/m smut games get delisted? Get fucked, puritans.
because MC and Visa are morons. According to them in porn 4 fingers and a thumb in a vagina is fine. as soon as you take said fingers and thumb, ball them into a fist, and then stick it in a vagina then they got problems with THAT and it’s a no go.
They have more stupid rules. If you piss on a woman in Europe and film it then it’s fine. If you piss on a woman in the US and film it then it’s not fine. IF you take the footage of someone pissing on a woman IN Europe and SELL it in the US then that’s fine. But Americans are not allowed to pee on Americans on US soil according to Visa and Mastercard.
here’s another one: Incest Porn is not fine according to Visa and MC. “but I see that stuff all the time!” I hear you say dear reader. Yes, because according to MC/Visa you MUST establish that this is a step family relationship in the beginning BUT further into said video you can drop the “step-” moniker and start throwing around regular dads and moms and brothers and sisters all you like.
But Americans are not allowed to pee on Americans on US soil according to Visa and Mastercard.
So much for ‘land of the free’.
Why is their logo a pink asshole?
Because they’re a bunch of fake feminist arseholes?
Now I want to make a slaanesh space marine with this on its pauldron.
Hey Australia, we’ve got enough stupid moral crusader nut jobs here in America; please stop making yours our problem too.
Don’t forget Ruport Murdoch who’s been pushing the right wing agenda across the country is an Australian export. This is not unusual from that country honestly.
He is from Australia originally, but he’s been a US naturalised citizen and lived there full-time since 1985, he gave up Australian citizenship 40 years ago.
No backsies.
How about we just send him half way back?
Deal if you send just half of him back.
Which half is dealers choice, and no need for a contiguous half. It can be half by volume.
I don’t think South Africa wants him either.
No, the other way. I assume it will be the middle of the ocean
Faux News has been the Right’s propaganda arm since inception, and I’ll call when that decrepit old bastard finally gets his ticket punched.
As if the Yankee sycophants are staying in their own lane as is.
Oh uncontested, but when somebody’s septic tank is already full, you don’t need to go shitting in their toilet.
Time to put some pressure on the pressure group.
Their logo is a butthole - is this some sort of elaborate troll??
e pluribus anus
No no, it represents the crossroads of learning
Learning about anal, maybe
sounds like it’s time to bring the 90s back. rotten.com here we go.
they want to stop the sale and purchase of adult content, so just give it away for free. shareware that shit and spread it like VD.
Unironically it will bring more people to dark corners of the net, foul content was always free. Now i’m not going for these games, but also comparing the entire nsfw genre to specific games is disingenuous. At the same time violence and shocking real life images are fine, right?
Nsfw involves adult themes that aren’t sexual.
That means censoring the self expression of consenting adults.
This creates a huge bottleneck that eventually just leads to this growing in the back of the visible. Porn addiction is a problem, sure. How did pre-teens gain access to this content? Didn’t parents give them a fully capable computer at all times?
Back when i used a computer, I only had access to research and office, also flash games. Other than that I had other devices and offline games, on cd.
Modern devices have better parental controls but nobody uses them, old computers had virtually none. Turns out you can do your parenting.
The dangers of this privacy invasive solution is the exposure of personal ID to questionable places, while bringing people towards bad places, that don’t ask for things.
Kinda like pirating a game as a kid, because you couldn’t buy it, but you only got viruses afterwards. Same deal.
I’m expecting many services to accept alternative payment methods soon, just to beon the safe side from meddling ex-monopolies.
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Stable coins on the rise, buy while they are cheap!
I thought more of Wero or Taler.
So I appreciate the pushback, but for those of us with the option, what should we choose? Amex? Discover? Bitcoin is non-viable.
I just want a solution, not another problem. I live in America, and we have WAY too many problems already.
Discover seems to be the best bet to me so far.
Discover is on the JCB, UnionPay, Troy and RuPay. (japan, China, turkey, and India respectively). Probably many more.
Similarly, a JCB card should work wherever Discover is. It’s a billateral alliance.
Oh, and all Discover cards work on Diners Club International because those two networks completely merged.
Alliance members are not 100% acceptance. It seems like 95%+ acceptance though (most JCB will accept most Discover cards and vice versa, though you will get confused looks from the locals). It sounds like there’s a lot of old equipment around the countries that break compatibility but cities and other urban areas with new equipment shouldn’t have any problems.
I’ll probably get a Discover card and start testing this out. I already have Visa and Mastercard but this new censorship issue seems serious enough to make me start supporting a 3rd place competitor.
Between Discover vs AmEx, it seems like AmEx is about elite club / customer service / returns etc. etc. nice features but I’m not sure if it’s worth the price.
Discover is free of annual fees, reasonable cash back, mediocre costs for the merchants (better than AmEx anyway and comparable vs Visa) and a surprisingly huge offering of international compatibility (RuPay, JCB, UnionPay, etc Etc). It seems like the winner to me as a 3rd card to experiment with.
Thanks for the info! I’ll start looking into this as well.
People outside of USA don’t even have Amex or Discover as options.
It’s either Visa, MC, or Bitcoin.
As a Canadian, American Express most certainly exists here. A quick google search shows that it exists in the UK as well. I’m going to guess it exists in other major countries as well.
No idea about Discover though. Barely even knew it existed at all.
Wero is being introduced for E-Commerce soon. So that may be an option.
Yeah, that sucks. I’m open to non US options as well, as long as I can use them here.
Nitpick: I’d like to know what part of incest implies violence and abuse.
Btw, does anyone know if Madmind Studios’ games were delisted as well? Agony and Succubus would make the fuckwits of Collective Shout shit themselves
Leaving aside how gross it is, and separate from whether corporations should be the arbiters of morality:
Incest between parent and child, even if the offspring is of legal age of consent, would imply an insurmountable power differential as well as likely grooming. Incest between siblings would depend on the age differential and authority structure of the family. It’s not a case of incest=abuse, but of how likely it could imply abuse. The challenge is nuance. The goal is harm reduction
I understand that for some incest porn is enjoyable, not because they would commit incest themselves, but because incest=forbidden=naughty=sexy. Maybe that’s you? In any case, you asked how violence is implied, and that’s my take
I’ll put $100 down to say there are members of Collective Shout that read books like ACOTAR and Haunting Adeline. I’ll even adjust to the Austrialian dollar. $100 says they read CNC type scenes. Not all of them, obviously, but enough to label them as the hypocrites they are.
Have you played any of these sexual violence games? You aren’t comparing apples to apples here, and there are plenty of books that are much more graphic than acotar or haunting Adeline.
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Theocratic dickheads and the proscription of sexual expression. Name a more classic pairing.
Yes, rape/abuse games are gross gooner bullshit but to paint all adult content with the same brush is just asinine. Huniepop is as much a rape/abuse simulator as it is a racing a game.
I can understand why they have problems with incest but what’s so wrong about rope games?
Because Jesus wept. Puritans are running the show as of now
